= A Serial Introduction Part 1=Winners of ITU-AJ Encouragement Awards 2018
In May every year, The ITU Association of Japan (ITU-AJ) proudly presents ITU-AJ Encouragement Awards to people who have madeoutstanding contributions in the field of international standardization and have helped in the ongoing development of ICT.
These Awards are also an embodiment of our sincere desire to encourage further contributions from these individuals in the future.
If you happen to run into these winners at another meeting in the future, please say hello to them.
But first, as part of the introductory series of Award Winners, allow us to introduce some of those remarkable winners.

Motohiro Abe

NTT DOCOMO, INC.
https://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/

Fields of activity: Standardization of the mobile core network

The world of standardization
I am delighted to have been selected to receive the ITU-AJ
Encouragement Award, and thank the company for putting my nameforward.
Here I would like to introduce something that we tend to take for
granted—the world of standardization.
Standardization is the process of making a product conform toa standard. For example, consider the familiar dry cell battery. Thesize has been standardized, so we are able to purchase standard AAA
batteries sold under countless brand names all over the world. The key
here is interchangeability; for all practical purposes, any AAA battery
is the same as any other AAA battery, and will power your device justthe same.
My area of expertise is mobile network roaming—the ability touse your cell phone outside your home service area—and here too
standardization is critically important. Without roaming, your cell
phone would drop calls as soon as you got out of your home servicearea. We at 3GPP are currently working on a roaming architecture for
Voice over LTE (VoLTE) called S8 Home Routing (S8HR). S8HR isAtsuro Ichigaya
Shunsuke Iwamura
Shimpei Nemoto

simple to implement, and thus shortens the time to rollout.
Standardization is more complicated than just setting uniformcharacteristics of AAA batteries or other products. It also refers tothe creation and use of common rules and guidelines in a particularindustry. In the mobile industry, for example, the GSM (GroupeSpécial Mobile) Association orchestrates standardization activities.
The GSMA does not actually create standards, but rather represents
the interests of its members—mobile operators, manufacturers, andother interested parties—who develop common rules and regulations
for the industry. These rules enable roaming and interoperability for
new mobile technologies.
It will be apparent that the world of standardization is far fromthe techno-geek discipline that you might have imagined. It isessential for establishing uniform characteristics of products, aswell as for establishing common rules and guidelines for different
industries. If you are interested to jumping into this chaotic yet
challenging world, I would encourage you to do so!

NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation)
https://www.nhk.or.jp/strl/index-e.html

Fields of activity: ITU-T SG16 WP3 Q.6(Video Coding)International standardization of video coding
It is a great honor to receive the ITU-AJ Encouragement Award,and I would express my sincere appreciation to the ITU Associationof Japan and to all those who helped us along the way.
On the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) ofITU-T SG16 WP3 Q.6 (VCEG) and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG
11 (MPEG), we have been working on the High Efficiency VideoCoding (H.265) standard and its extensions.
Around 2015, we saw a surge on interest among filmmakers,
broadcasters, and other video industry players in High Dynamic

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Range (HDR) video, and in 2016 the JCTVC began studying a supplement that would
provide HDR coding guidelines for H.265
codecs. Interestingly, the HDR standard allows
for two competing HDR workflows: Perceptual
Quantization (PQ ) developed in the U.S., andHybrid-Log Gamma (HLG) developed in acollaborative effort by NHK and the BBC. PQ
supports video services in well managed viewing

environments such as in movie theaters, while HLG is optimized forbroadcasting where a wider range of viewing environments would beassumed. In developing guidelines for these two different formats,it was critically important that when we came up with an effective
proposal for one, we had to scrutinize it very carefully to make surethat it did not adversely affect the other. We scrutinized and discussed
the data of repeated verification experiments. The results of thesedeliberations were published in 2017 as Supplements 15 and 18 toITU-T H-series Recommendations.
In 2018, we agree to create a new joint collaborative team between

Koichi Ichikawa

MPEG and VCEG called the Joint Video Experts Team (JVET)
that immediately set to work on a next-generation video coding
standard that will significantly improve the compression performance.
We believe the deliberations made in JCT-VC will also be utilized in
the development of the new standard that includes HDR coding with
its scope.
Through active involvement in JVET, we are committed todeveloping a next-generation video coding standard that will support
future broadcasting services.

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East - Minamikantou Corporationkouichi.
http://www.ntt-east.co.jp/en/

Fields of activity: Telecommunications

Activities in the United Republic of Tanzania and the Socialist
Republic of Vietnam
It is a great honor to receive the ITU-AJ Encouragement Award.
My first involvement in international cooperation was a two-year stintin Tanzania as a Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteer (JOCV). I
remember feeling a sense of elation and hope coupled with trepidation
as the plane departed from Narita in December 1986 for the two-day
trip to Dar es Salaam. A month later, I was assigned to serve as atelephone line engineer for the Dar es Salaam Telephone Companyof Tanzania Posts and Telecommunications with responsibility
for maintaining underground cable. Basically my job involved
technology transfer working together Tanzanian telecom employees
to troubleshoot and repair problems using special measurement gearand equipment. During the first year, we had over 80,000 repair
requests for 24,000 subscriber lines, and I finished two full years ofcooperative activity cleaning up Tanzania’s poor telephony situation.
Then in 2007, I got involved in an optical access trial in ThangLong Industrial Park in Hanoi, Vietnam. This was a collaborative

Junichi Iwatani

venture between NTT Group and Hanoi Telecom Group to install aGigabit-Ethernet Passive Optical Network (GE-PON) in the ThangLong Industrial Park central office, to connect the GE-PON to theHanoi Telecom network, then upgrade transmission speed and verify
network stability through data transmissions to and from Japan.
The role of our company, NTT-ME, was technology transfer in thebroadest sense of the term. This involved preliminary investigationand design, drawing up a list of equipment to be procured, assemble
trial equipment on time, prepare a manual, supervise on-the-job
training, and ensure Hanoi Telecom operations and maintenance are
running smoothly after the trial equipment is installed.
I experienced firsthand the high expectations of Vietnam throughimplementation of this optical access trial. Based on my experiences
overseas, I think I will have other opportunities to help countries
upgrade their telecom infrastructure in the years ahead.

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
http://www.ntt.co.jp/index_e.html

Fields of activity: ITU-R SG5 WP5A, Wireless LANActivities to Improve Operational Conditions of Wireless LANs
It is a great honor to receive the ITU-AJ Encouragement Award.
Starting in 2015, I was engaged in preparing and revising the draft
standard of the next-generation high efficiency wireless LAN(802.11ax) in the IEEE 802.11 Task Group ax, and in 2017 I joined
the Japanese delegation to ITU-R WP5A to work on revision of 5
GHz wireless LAN operational conditions (WRC-19 Agenda Item1.16).
In ITU-R WP5A meetings, I am currently focusing on activities
to relax restrictions on 5 GHz wireless LANs including expansionof outdoor use, and in the draft CPM text for the WRC-19 recently
completed in May 2018 we have successfully reflected some of Japan’s
proposals to allow outdoor use and higher power transmission in the5.2 GHz band as an option for revision of the Radio Regulations.

The immediate issue is whether the frequency band can be sharedwith other systems once the regulations are relaxed. While we haveconducted technical studies and insisted that the frequency band canbe shared under certain conditions so far, it is imperative that thisshould be reflected in an ITU-R Report on sharing and compatibility.
Based on these technical studies, I would like to work on building aconsensus at the ITU-R meetings on relaxing the conditions towardrevision of the regulations at the WRC-19.
Based on my own experience working for both the IEEE andthe ITU-R meetings, I would like to contribute over the long term
to further upgrading operational conditions of wireless LANs andraising Japan’s profile and influence in standardization meetings.

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